Drinking with Irinarhov Again. - Investigative Notebook of the Internal Service

Page Summary

Drinking with Irinarhov Again.

Well, I manned up and invited Captain Irinarhov to drink with me last night. Interesting evening by all accounts, sincere apologies on my behalf, and a surprising lack of recrimination on his part.

Then we had a more intimate dialogue about some shadowy things on the ice of the heart, and I let fall some intricate snowflakes from locked lips.

I think he was worried that I overstep my boundaries again, but as I assured him, I wasn't interested in victimizing his trust.

We had reached a beautiful and pleasant impasse- but unfortunately, like an icicle, it wasn't destined to last. I don't know where we stand now.

I suppose I have my soldier friend to thank for that targeted destruction.

Not that I'm not culpable, oh very much so. Fallible, culpable and vaguely regretful.

But that whole fiasco came up later, and frankly, I don't want to think about it now.

Enough, already.

capt_kasya: These days, Kassian brought his rifle with him everywhere.

It wasn't exactly standard procedure, but these weren't standard times. Killers and snipers on the loose, muttered talk and rumors about disturbances in the night, guards found unconscious, intruders.

It almost felt like the war again, which was why the Mosin-Nagant rested at Kassian's back as he entered the main wing to have a drink with Liadov.

The MVD operativnik had caught his arm at the end of his shift and invited him to drop by after mess. Kassian had hesitated a little, remembering the last time, but then he'd reminded himself that it had turned out fine in the end.

He'd accepted with a diffident nod and the slightest upcurve of his lips. Liadov had seemed pleased, which Kassian found encouraging.

They were friends now, and that was what friends did.

He turned down the hall and walked up to Liadov's door, pausing before he knocked, taking a surreptitious look and listen. Isaev had told him that Vitya's room was in the same area, but he saw no sign of his former lover - or anyone else, for that matter.

It was better that way.

Kassian politely knocked once on the door, then waited.

nikanor_liadov: Liadov normally would have called out a careless "come in", but in light of the kinds of friends he was making lately, one couldn't be too careful.

He unlatched the door and met the knock himself.

"Irinarhov," he said, smiling. "Khorosho. I am glad not to see a psychopath."

Nika gestured into the room.

"Please."

The sniper looked well enough, his expression optimistic, and not especially guarded. Hair, black like onyx, with striations of silver here and there. Barely visible. His rifle hung over his shoulder.

Protection, though Liadov, wryly amused.

Well, you won't need it tonight, friend. I'm through threatening you with my primal affections.

He stepped inside at Liadov's invitation, by reflex sweeping the room as he did so, gaze seeking out the places where someone could possibly hide. Nothing.

Kassian refrained from checking the lavatory, like he would have if he were on duty.

Carefully, he unslung his rifle and leaned it against the wall, then hesitated, turning to Liadov apologetically.

"I'm going to..." he said, vaguely, gesturing as he undid his belt. "Gear."

He was fully kitted, as if still on duty, but he didn't need to be wearing over five kilos of equipment to have a drink with a friend.

Kassian pulled the belt free and laid it over the back of the chair.

"Were you expecting to see a psychopath?" he finally asked, turning back to Liadov with a frown.

nikanor_liadov: Nika laughed as he opened the sash and pulled a bottle of slivovic off the windowsill.

"That's right," he said, in realization. "You missed all the fun the other night."

He set the slilvovic in front of Irinarhov and opened his black valise, retrieving his usual small square bottle of amber cognac.

"I got you something more to your taste, worker," Liadov drawled. "So you don't have to turn up your nose at my liquor."

A wry smile touched his lips and dissipated, as he poured himself a finger of liqueur.

capt_kasya: Kassian raised a brow but pulled off his gloves, stashing them in a pocket.

"You didn't have to do that," he said, picking up the bottle.

He'd had some of Liadov's cognac last time. It had been rich and smooth on his tongue, but entirely too seductive for his tastes. Too easy to drink. In truth, he did prefer something that went down more harshly.

"But thank you," Kassian added. "I appreciate it."

He looked around for a place to sit, hesitating, not committing in any direction. Last time he'd sat down on Liadov's bed, but he wasn't sure if he should repeat that, either.

nikanor_liadov: "No," Liadov said slowly, rubbing his jaw. "I don't think I'll have need for a guard detail any more."

He shrugged.

"I was pulled behind a tank by an unseen assailant on my way back from mess. Obviously someone well-schooled in Special Tactics....." Liadov trailed off and smiled obscurely. "...Very well schooled."

That night came back to him, briefly, in passionate flashes.

He shook his head.

"I'm sorry, Captain," he laughed, tossing back the dregs of his glass and stretching. "The details aren't really important. To an observer, it must have looked like I was in danger. I was not, in fact. What it amounted to was me and a...companion... getting an AK and a Tokarev in the maw, from a couple of disparate well-meaning helpers."

Liadov paused.

"At least, Lieutenant Rakitin was well-meaning. I have my doubts about the other guy."

capt_kasya: Kassian sat quietly, frowning, absorbing Liadov's words. He mulled them over for long moments, trying to decide if there was any room for misinterpretation.

"Picture your Andrei, the coldest you've ever seen him. And then picture him at his most reckless and impassioned. Then put them both in one mortal coil, and add a healthy dose of entitlement."

He shook his head.

"Age ten years. Shake well. Blanch the hair blonder still, to winter white. Sharpen the features, just a little. Add a sprinkle of sadism, just for flavor," he added dryly.

His gaze softened.

"Give him Andrei's devotion. But none of Andrei's compassion."

He took a sip of his cognac.

"Then, you will have a semblance of Ilarion Alexandrovich Isaev. Edo et amo. I hate and I love. He loves those who are his own. He will destroy anyone else, for he has no heart for those outside his crimson circle."

Nika looked up.

"To be loved by a man like that...is both a blessing and curse."

He rubbed his face.

"I couldn't forgive him, not for trying to destroy Nina. My god, Kasya, they could have sent her to the Zone for adultery- don't you think he knew that? After Isaeva, especially-"

He brushed his thumb against the lip of the bottle, but didn't take a drink.

"You can't change him, and he'll never change."

It made him think of Vitya, and impossible romances, though his relationship with Vitya seemed mild in comparison. Once more, his problems became paltry in light of Liadov's struggles.

Kassian sighed with a slump of his shoulders, and looked over at the MENT.

"Maybe it's like being afraid of death," he offered. "If you spend your time worrying about it, fretting about when it will come and what will happen when it does, you'll miss out on enjoying the life you have."

"What do I want to know about them? And yes, like most attractions, it has something to do with looks. Tell me you can understand that. Would you have fallen for Isaev so thoroughly and well if he weren't..."

Liadov broke off, smiling resignedly. He sighed, gesturing absently.

"You're a very, very good man, Irinarhov. You'll never understand the appeal of rough, strange hands touching your most intimate places..."

capt_kasya: Kassian frowned, thinking about that, taking a drink as he considered.

"I don't think not understanding that has anything to do with being a good man. Or not," Kassian said, slowly.

He rubbed the back of his neck, and averted his gaze to the floor.

"I"ve had...comrades touch me in dark before. It happened fast, and I didn't stop it. But I always felt..."

He shook his head.

"I don't know. Unfulfilled, I guess. Like something was lacking. I can't imagine doing more with someone I didn't know. I feel like I wouldn't know how."

He glanced up, and looked over at Liadov, his brow furrowed and low.

"We're just different. I don't think less of you because of it. I just...wouldn't want that for myself."

nikanor_liadov: "No one asked you to," Liadov said flatly. "I suppose you would simply become celibate in my place."

And he had no doubt the sniper would.

"The truth is, it becomes less of an issue, the more experienced you are in sexual-social matters. The more you fuck, the less of an end-all be-all the act becomes."

He paused.

"I actually think it makes you more, and not less, discriminating in the end. I may give many people the keys to the car, but I reserve the key to the heart."

A slow smile burned its way across his lips.

"Some people, on the other hand, fall in love with everything that penetrates them. Or vice versa. I don't find that a biologically adaptive technique."

It made him think about Vitya. He'd loved Vitya in spite of what he was like, not out of any deep-rooted compatibility. And in the end, it had cost him. Made him less likely to trust others, less willing to get involved.

And when he'd finally come around again, and had taken Isaev to his bed, it had been loaded. It made Kassian wonder if he'd fallen in love with Isaev only because he fucked him, or if he'd gotten lucky, and fucked someone he could fall in love with.

He was silent, thinking, brooding. He took a drink of the slilvovic and swallowed it slowly, letting it burn.

"He described Aleksandr as cold and distant. He rarely thinks of his father, he said. Nothing about his mother."

nikanor_liadov: "Well...I suppose that's not surprising. He was only a child when she died."

He scratched his nose, shrugging.

"Four or so. Anyway, what I always tacitly knew, growing up, was that she killed herself. What I didn't know until Ilarion told me, was what preceded that act."

Liadov sighed, toyed with bottle, weighed it and finally poured another measure.

"He was drunk, one night. It was during the festival of white nights in Leningrad. We were holed up in a downtown dignitary hotel, on the MVD's ruble, just drinking and lounging, like you and I are now."

Nika paused, took a sip. Savored the succulent candied flavor. It clashed against the lack of sweetness in what he related, but complemented the bittersweetness of his memory.

"And he asked me what I knew of his mother, out of nowhere. I told him what I knew. That she had committed suicide. And then, he told me the rest. What he'd never told Andrei, or anyone else. He was the only witness to her shaming and branding, aside from Aleksandr's cronies."

Liadov smiled bloodlessly.

"I won't belabor it. But in semaphore, comrade, she had a lover. Not because she didn't love Aleksandr. No, far from it. Because he had become distant and dark since taking over for Evstrat. The Isaev legacy had him gripped thoroughly, and she was lonely."

He met Kassian's eyes, and kept them steady.

"The lover was a dancer at the Kirov. Aleksandr found out, somehow. He was astonished. He was furious, but only betrayed it in his coldness. He had the MVD catch her in the act, and drag her home, where he threw her out of the house and informed he she would never again see her children."

Liadov exhaled, quietly.

"Later, he told Ilarion it was an act of mercy. That he had spared her the worse fate of exposure, where surely decorum would have demanded she be sent to the Zone."

He shrugged.

"I don't know about that. But three days later, they found her pegnoir-clad body in the Fotanka canal. Lasha said the diaphanous silk billowed all around her like a jellyfish."

He eyed his bottle. This was the sort of conversation he had to be more drunk to take. He still felt sober enough to let it rock him, to feel disconcerted by such acts of viciousness.

He hesitated, but didn't take another drink.

Kassian thought about Andrei, who had grown up in this family, in this environment of betrayal and death. He thought about young Andrei looking up to see Dmitri Irinarhov's dead body burned to the prison fence.

And Andrei wondered why he was a sick fuck, as if there he'd been born with something wrong with him.

Kassian actually thought he'd turned out remarkably well-balanced, in spite of it all.

"But if Andrei was four...Ilarion wasn't that old, was he? A teenager?"

"Ilarion was sixteen when his mother killed herself. So Andrei would have been six, not four. But still young. Too young to understand."

Liadov smiled, and it was brittle.

"Ilarion was a junior militsioner, and he happened to be on the clock. He was there when they fished her out of the river. It came in on a call. He saw her from a distance, and knew her. A man knows his own mother, he told me."

He made a whimsical motion with the glass, that didn't match his expression.

"He hissed a few choice words of discretion to the MVD Captain on duty, who paled and threw a sheet over her. Then he called his father."

He looked at the bottle in his hands, and began to toy with the label, pulling at a corner, worrying at the edges.

Kassian paused to shake his head.

"But...how does your family come into the picture? Was it that your mother and Andrei's were friends? Or...did it have something to do with your father?"

He looked at Liadov, gaze steady and somber.

"You told me you never knew him. It seems like a long time ago you said that, now. But it's not been long at all, has it?"

nikanor_liadov: "That's the irony. When Avdotia died...Aleksandr...crumbled. That monument of sovietskyj. Bronze and iron reduced to a rubble of flesh and blood and bone."

Liadov rubbed his jaw, absently.

"He locked himself in. For three nightmarish days he raved silently. Ilarion said he was pale as death. Inconsolable. Wouldn't eat. Drank all night. Sat in his library chair, holding her fur coat in his arms, burying his face in the collar to smell her perfume. Never spoke. Would turn cold, cauterizing eyes on anyone who attempted to approach him."

He shrugged and waved his hand.

"And then," he said, in an artificially lightened tone, "On the fourth morning, he came out for work, uniform pressed. Shaved roman and boots immaculate. Reached for the paper and took his coffee. Nodded to Lasha, and tousled Andrei's hair as if nothing had happened."

Nika frowned.

"We had known the Isaevs since I was a child. My father was a Hero of the Soviet union, my mother an honored widow. She was given a dacha, a country house, in honor of my father. It just so happened to be beside the Isaev's dacha, in the state preserve. That was how I first met Ilarion- playing in the birch woods."

He smiled, slightly, but lowered his eyes.

"In Leningrad, we would see them as well. We had occasion to travel in the same circles. Attend the same dinners and schools. Avdotia and my mother were casual friends, and took us to the park together as children. We lived nearby and became inseparable."

He watched Irinarhov destroy the label with vague amusement.

"This is bothering you," he observed, not without empathy.

Then he leaned back, pushing his cap off, and running his hands out to the ends of his hair.

"Aleksandr always treated my mother with reverence and chivalry, as a war widow. Almost like some...icon. A Venus of the CCCP. He was eager to be my benefactor, to do his duty to the state, and honor my father. But after Avdotia's death, her empathy as a widow, toward Isaev the widower was open-armed and hearted."

Liadov shook his head, bemused.

"He fell in love with her. He seduced her with vicious Russian passion, romanced her. She loves him to this day, but with great, wise care. She is always her own. They meet like young lovers, still, in private. In public, they smile and behave with great and decorous affection. Their relationship has never been acknowledged, in all these years, though they have been together longer now than either of their marriages."

He smiled oddly.

"She told me, although I already understood what had happened. Nothing escaped me, even as a child. She never kept anything from me," he said, wryly. "Although she very often told me not to tell the Isaevs certain things. That I was diabetic, for instance. She knew I wouldn't. I was silent as the grave when I wanted to be. And for her, I wanted to be."

capt_kasya: Kassian looked up at Liadov, then down at what he was doing. He'd pulled up one corner of the slilvovic label, torn it off.

He shook his head.

"It's just...I think about these things...this is where Andrei came from. This is part of what made him who he is. Ilarion, too. And you."

Kassian turned to look at Liadov from under a hooded, furrowed gaze.

"He couldn't accept her betrayal, so he cut her from his life. Better that, than he give her the chance to hurt him again. Better that, than he give her actions some kind of tacit approval."

He searched the luminous, Russian green of Liadov's eyes slowly, but with quiet, unspoken compassion.

"Better that, than a lot of things."

Kassian paused.

"Instead of tending to the wound, he amputated the limb. And even knowing how much it would hurt, he did it anyway. Better not to take chances. Or so he thought. Perhaps he still wasn't prepared, though, for how hard it would be."

He could see it. A wounded young man, in pain. A distant and merciless father. Innocent younger siblings who had no way of truly understanding what had happened.

"So life went on," Kassian said, "without their mother."

This was the background that seemed to shame Isaev, vaguely. I don't come from good men, he'd told Kassian. As if Kassian would recoil from a tragedy that could only have been avoided if the participants involved were entirely different people. Men acted according to their own natures; Aleksandr had only acted in the only way he knew how.

He turned his gaze back to Liadov.

"Thank you...for trusting me with this. For telling me the story. I understand him better now. I understand...the family. And I think it's important that I do."

"I can't see how it hurts to tell you. I told you enough about myself for one lifetime. Better it be someone else, nyet?"

He smirked.

"Especially someone you're not getting rid of anytime soon."

He sighed, shrugged, sipped.

"Life went on," he agreed. "And Lasha was the only one old enough to truly remember Avadya at all. Andrei probably remembers her a little. Baby Masha not at all. She was a very pretty woman. Like a film star. A Romy Schneider."

He smiled.

"None of this changes the fact that Ilarion is an ice-hearted bastard."

capt_kasya: "No," Kassian said, slowly. "Though I suppose it helps, to understand where it came from. How it started."

He shook his head.

"Helps as much as it can."

Kassian leaned back on the bed, feeling warm. Feeling drunk. Feeling like he'd like to fall asleep.

"Though I suppose you're not getting rid of him either, are you? In spite of your break."